In the rapid development of Chinese higher vocational education, large gaps have appeared in the scale of development and resource generation among the provinces, among regions in the provinces, and among higher education institutions in the provinces. Balanced regional development and provincial-level coordination have become policy focal points, but a discussion of the relationship between the two has been lacking in the academic world. Based on 2009 data on vocational colleges in China, the quantitative analysis in this paper shows that there is a tension between the governance models of higher vocational education and balanced development of vocational colleges within provinces. Research findings show that school affiliation is related to the ability to attract public funding, appropriations for public schools are significantly higher than for private schools, and tuition for private schools is significantly higher than for public schools; school affiliation is related to output, and the new student registration rate and number of cooperating enterprises is higher for public schools than private schools; and there is a significant positive correlation between the ratio of prefecture-level city schools and the average number of cooperating enterprises for schools in a province, and a significant positive correlation between the ratio of private schools and the average tuition of schools in a province. This paper suggests that to achieve the dual objectives of balance and development, provincial-level governments should adjust their administrations and financing for higher vocational education and decentralize their authority to local governments, in order to build a diverse and flexible new model for higher vocational education governance.
Using a new enrollment dataset of Shanghai public colleges for 2009, we investigate whether the increase in the stratification of Chinese higher education is attributed to the decentralization of higher education finance. We discover that colleges in Shanghai not only admit significantly more in-province students (which we refer to as quantity bias), but also quietly place more out-of-province students, especially those from poor provinces, in low-paying majors (which we refer to as quality bias) when tuition is regulated by the central government. Both types of biases are more obvious in local colleges funded primarily by the Shanghai municipal government than in national colleges jointly funded by central and municipal governments. Our findings provide suggestive evidence that the decentralization of higher education finance in China deeply exacerbates the inequality of higher education opportunities.
The heavy reliance of Chinese local governments on land‐leasing revenues in recent decades has attracted widespread criticism due to its potential risks and problems. This research, using a panel dataset of 280 prefecture‐level cities in China from 1999 to 2009, explores what factors affect Chinese city governments’ dependence on land finance. The findings provide strong support for hypotheses concerning the effects of both fiscal incentives and political incentives on local fiscal behavior. Both fiscal factors—such as local reliance on fiscal transfers and fiscal decentralization—and political factors—including local top leaders’ tenure and their distance to mandatory retirement—have exerted significant impacts on city governments’ reliance on land finance. These findings point to the significance of intergovernmental fiscal arrangements and political institutions in affecting local government fiscal behavior in developing countries.
The article explains the ongoing resilience of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime as a dynamic process of continual institutional adaptation of the CCP’s threat-management system, which simultaneously must address vertical (popular) and horizontal (internal) challenges. The author finds that the CCP central leadership’s current top-down intervention into subnational governments, featuring Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, reform of local government financing platforms (LGFPs), and consolidation of personal power over the party-state, is the second of two major actions over the last thirty years designed to maintain the stability and survival of the single-party system. Notably, many of the contemporary challenges faced by the regime, such as a local government budgetary crisis and rampant official corruption within subnational governments, are in many respects the unforeseen consequences of an earlier intervention by the Center conducted in the mid-1990s under Jiang Zemin.
The right to education for children from rural migrant families in urban areas has sparked heated debates in China. While there are increasing indications of policy changes to bring public education to all citizens regardless of their residency, it is less clear what kinds of resources are needed to create an education supply to serve this constantly moving and ever-growing population. Using archival and interview data on a large urban district in Shanghai, the authors analyze the constraints faced by local government in providing full-scale free education to migrant children. The authors find that the public finance scheme, teacher staffing policy and land use policy are the three factors that constrain the supply of public education in large metropolitan areas. This analysis also shows that under the current decentralized management scheme, local government alone does not have the capacity to resolve these constraints. This finding calls for coordination among various state branches at the national level.
There are two major models in China's Province-Managing-County (PMC) reform: the Province-Fiscally-Managing-County (PFMC) and the Power-Expanding-County (PEC). This paper is intended to compare the fiscal and economic effects of these two reform models based on their different categories of reform policies—fiscal decentralization policies and economic empowerment policies. By taking Henan's PMC reform as an empirical case study, we find that a) Henan's PFMC reform did not contribute to the growth of county economy through a series of economic empowerment policies and exclusively fiscal decentralization policies, though it promoted the increase in transfer revenue at the county level. b) By contrast, Henan's PEC reform through only economic empowerment policies did not contribute to county's growth of transfer incomes, but it significantly promoted the growth of county economy with an annual downward trend. The further analyses on these findings show that the expansion of economic autonomy by the economic empowerment is the key positive factor to the growth of county economy in the PEC reform, while the moral hazard caused by the fiscal decentralization is the major negative factor holding back the economic effect of the PFMC reform. Therefore, this throws out a hint that the improvement of economic autonomy in county governments will be a right and effective approach to promote the sustainable development of county economy, though it should be further examined in the future research.
The interconnectedness of financial deepening and income inequality has been a highly controversial discussion which has not been concluded despite many empirical and theoretical studies up to date. One of the basic building blocks for many research designs is the reliance upon the Kuznets inverted U-shaped curve which postulates that in the first phase of economic growth income inequality increases, peaks and then decreases to a tolerable level in the later phase after a certain income level had been attained. The role of financial deepening in financing economic growth is an indispensable and necessary condition enabling us to easily draw an analogy between financial deepening and income inequality in a financial version of the Kuznets curve. In spite of 30 years of economic and financial reforms in China, which represents a fairly young history of economic growth and development, there are many indicators that Chinese experience significantly deviates from the presupposed inverted U-shaped curve trajectory and its final equalizing effect. This paper relies on financial deepening data measured by monetary aggregate M2/GDP and domestic banking credit/GDP ratios in its claim that they significantly correlate with rising income inequality. The author’s intention consists not in claiming that financial deepening per se causes income inequality, but provides a political economy analysis of the specific institutional and power configuration which leads to their positive relationship. This configuration is determined by the prevailing banking model, the hukou system, financial repression and the decentralized authoritarian system. On the other hand, the absence of inequality-narrowing institutitons further aggravate the problem. All the aforementioned factors are geared at avoiding mechanical and spurious claims that financial deepening increases or decreases income inequality across countries. A historical institutionalism approach to explain China’s path related to the Kuznets curve prediction shows the central validity of open and inclusive institutions in generating inequality-narrowing benefits of financial deepening.
Land finance is the most important issue in China during the last decade,one explanation is that the local governments are pushed to sell the land because they have great fiscal pressure.This paper uses the natural experiment of newly appointed minister in China between 1998 and 2007 to test the hypothesis,we get several finds.Fistly,newly elected ministers significantly reduce the fiscal pressure of their hometown,those ministers will change the allocation of central earmarked grants and increase 12%grants for their hometown.Secondly,the reductions of fiscal pressure of ministers' hometown have no impact on the land finance behavior,the area and revenue of land sales have not changed.Thirdly,the real cause of land finance is the impulse to invest,even the earmarked grants are used for productive infrastructure but not the basic public service.The policy implications of this paper is that the future reform should focus on the land leasehold policy,while the decentralization is not a feasible way because the fiscal pressure is not the real cause of land finance.
Elites often use social policies to garner political support and ensure regime survival, but social policies are not a silver bullet. Using two waves of Chinese national surveys, I find that a recent policy of abolishing school fees has significantly increased citizens’ demand for greater government responsibility in financing compulsory education. I argue that policy awareness, rather than policy benefits, drives citizens’ demand. Finally, I show that policy awareness has enhanced citizens’ trust in China's central government, but not in local governments. This asymmetry in regime support has two sources—the decentralization of education provision and biased media reporting—which induce citizens to credit the central government for good policy outcomes. Given that citizens’ responses are primarily influenced by policy awareness that is promoted by the state media, this study casts doubt on the use of social policies to sustain long-term political support.
Abstract In the last three decades, China has experienced dual decentralization in transforming its economy, resulting in decentralization and deconcentration in public administration and social service delivery. Under the policy framework of decentralization, particularly when welfare financing has been decentralized to local governments, the emergence of welfare regionalism is evident in China. This paper sets out against this policy context to examine how three local governments in eastern coastal areas in China handle changing labour welfare needs by institutionalizing social and labour protection measures to meet the local needs instead of implementing central policy. With particular reference to examine why regional variations exist in welfare provision even though the socio-economic development status is similar in these areas, this paper shows how different forms of capitals, government's governance style and diversity of industries have affected welfare arrangements for labour in China.
OBJECTIVE: China's ongoing new health reform aims to reduce individual out-of-pocket (OOP) payments for healthcare services. The aim of this article is to analyse the impact of this reform and to draw policy implications. METHODS: Data are retrieved from the relevant government publications. Polynomial regression models are used to predict future health expenditures. An extensive sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the ratios of OOP payments to the total health expenditures (THEs) and to the disposable personal income (DPI) for 2009-11 under different scenarios of cost projections and personal income distributions. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are carried out to draw conclusions. RESULTS: The ratios of OOP payments to THE and DPI vary significantly across scenarios tested. Only if all committed government investments and social health expenditure are realized can China's new health reform reduce both ratios and achieve its target goals. In particular, the ratio of OOP payments to DPI can also be significantly reduced by improving income distribution. Due to the complicated interplay among different cost components in health expenditures, these two ratios may not change in the same direction, indicating that both need to be examined when evaluating the reform. CONCLUSION: The new health reform in China aims to alleviate the high OOP payments for healthcare services, but it has not yet been able to reduce both OOP-to-THE and OOP-to-DPI ratios simultaneously. Major reasons include (1) inability of local governments to fulfil their responsible investments due to health finance decentralization and uneven economic development in China and (2) a serious cost inflation in health expenditures coupled with a low level of income distribution. It is suggested that the central government should bear more financial responsibility and assist local governments to fully invest, and should improve individual incomes, in particular for the poor.
The financial situation in China before Westernization Movement and the financial situation in Japan before Meiji Reform were similar and confronted financial crisis.Because of political and economic difference before the reform of the two countries,and because of the difference in reform guiding ideas and leading capacity of the two countries,Westernization Movement of the Qing Dynasty did not conduct political system reform,its financial system was still the management style under feudal system,the Qing Dynasty only decentralized its financial right,which finally did not bring about financial situation change but intensified financial crisis,however,Meiji Reform of Japanese Government is overall,conducted relatively thorough political system reform,reformed salary system to reduce financial expenditure,reformed land tax to increase financial revenue,supported civil capital to exploit new tax sources and finally solved financial crisis to have set up new financial system conducive to capitalist production mode development.
Chinese local governments have obtained incremental land by continuous city expansion and infrastructure investment, and have consequently acquired large amounts of land granting revenue. Based on a theoretical analysis framework, this paper explains the impact of Chinese style decentralization on local government behavior. Because the fiscal decentralization weakened the decision and distribution right of local government revenue or expenditure, the pressure of the gap between local government revenue and expenditure has grown. This research provides a new perspective for understanding the deviation of land granting prices and will help develop policy to regulate the behavior of local governments. We conducted an analysis using prefecture-level panel data from 1999 to 2009 for the Yangtze River Delta region. The results showed that Chinese style decentralization has significant incentives on the land finance of local governments. Fiscal decentralization was found to have a positive effect on the increase of industrial, commercial and residential land prices; political centralization was found to have a positive effect on commercial and residential land prices. In conclusion, the land finance tendency of local governments and deviations in land granting price have a close relationship with institutional arrangements of Chinese style decentralization.
This thematic edition of Policy & Society contains a set of seven articles about transport infrastructure policy in the People’s Republic of China. Though they all revolve around this central topic, they cover different facets, such as the influence of Confucian values on decision-making, its impact on macro-economic development and regional distribution, power relations within Public Private Partnerships, organizational and contractual relations in subway construction, the duration of decision-making processes and the viability of developing Transit Oriented Development in Chinese cities. This first contribution will sketch a general overview of two driving forces behind China’s motorization process (economic growth and urbanization), what the impact has been on the expansion of the transport networks and hubs and what social and policy problems Chinese authorities currently have to tackle as a consequence of these developments. It ends with a small prospectus of the other six contributions to this volume. As it has transformed from a centrally planned economy to a market economy since the late 1970s with the “opening-up” policies brought forward by Deng Xiaoping, China has experienced rapid economic growth of almost 10% per annum on average (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2009; OECD, 2010). Over the past three decades, China has regarded economic growth as a national priority to improve human welfare and eradicate poverty, while GDP as a primary economic growth indicator has been extensively used to assess the success of national or regional economic policies (Wen & Chen, 2008). National GDP increased from 455 to 39,798 billion RMB between 1980 and 2010. In the same period, per capita income rose from 463 to 29,940 RMB. Given the impressive growth performance, three globalized regional economies, those of the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the Bohai Rim Bay Area, have continued to outperform all other regions in China (Fig. 1). These three regions, which together account for only 1.6% of China’s total land area, have contributed 12.3%, 27.4% and 26.3% respectively to China’s national GDP in recent years on average (Tuan, Ng et al., 2009). China’s geography. Capital investment (including domestic investment and foreign direct investment), international trade and capital accumulation are three key determinants for China’s rapid economic growth (Tuan et al., 2009; Whalley & Xin, 2010). China’s institutional reforms have fundamentally transformed the economic system through introducing decentralization and privatization: the transfer of economic-decision power from the central government to local authorities and the permission of (foreign) private investment in public infrastructures, which provides significant incentive for local authorities to build and expand the fixed assets of their localities with widening financial sources. This has resulted in large scale fixed-asset investment over the past three decades. According to the official statistics, fixed-asset investment relative to GDP rose from 20.0% in 1980 to 69.9% in 2010. On the other hand, the opening-up development strategy, together with preferential policies for foreign investors and outward-looking industries, has vigorously promoted China’s absorption of foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade. Since the restriction on FDI inflows into China was removed in 1979 and a new foreign investment law was enacted in 1984, China has received a large amount of FDI flows and become the largest FDI recipient among developing countries. Usually, the FDI inflows are realized by establishing foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) in China, which are often joint ventures between foreign companies and Chinese enterprises. These FIEs account for about 20–40% of China’s GDP in recent years and without them China’s overall GDP growth rate could have been around 3.4% points lower (Whalley & Xin, 2010). Furthermore, international trade has produced a continuously growing trade surplus since 1978. China’s remarkable economic growth has been concomitant with an almost equally rapid growth in urban expansion (Deng, Huang et al., 2008; Ho & Lin, 2004; Lichtenberg & Ding, 2009; Lin, 2001, 2007; Zhou & Ma, 2000). Urban expansion, on the one hand, refers to the situation of spreading spatially outwards from the city to its outskirts, and on the other hand, it refers to the process of in situ urbanization of rural areas, i.e. the gradual abandonment of agriculture as a way of life in favor of work in rural industries (Friedmann, 2005; Yusuf & Saich, 2008). On a national scale, China’s urban land area increased by 817,000 ha in the period of 1990–2000 and sprawled even faster in the period of 2001–2005 by 849,400 ha (Han, 2010; Lin & Ho, 2005). And the most significant expansion often occurred in coastal city-regions (e.g. Liaoning, Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, etc.), especially in those large cities whose urban centers are surrounded by secondary cities and rural townships (Deng & Huang, 2004; Wei & Zhao, 2009). On a local scale, individual cities have been adding huge amounts of suburban land to their already urbanized areas. For instance, large cities such as Beijing and Guangzhou experienced growth in urban land use of 30–50% in the past 15 years (Han, 2010; Wu, Li et al., 2006; Yu & Ng, 2007). City agglomerations including the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region and the Pearl River Delta region expanded more than 70% in the 1990s (Li & Yeh, 2004; Tan, Li et al., 2005). In addition, small cities expanded even more rapidly than the large ones. In the Beijing–Tianjin–Tangshan region the urban area of small cities increased by 80% in the same decade (Tan et al., 2005). One widely discussed reason leading to the urban expansion in China is the growth of the urban population (Liu, Zhan et al., 2005; Tan et al., 2005; Wu et al., 2006). From 1978 to 2010, China’s urban population increased from about 172 million to 666 million and the level of urbanization rose from 18% to 49.7% (Han, 2010). Because of the growing difference in living standards between urban and rural areas, the pressure of urbanization is bound to increase further in the future. Urban expansion is therefore taking place in order to accommodate this population growth. Similarly, the economic growth and changes in the industrial structure naturally extend urban activities to the peripheral areas, and make rural areas industrialized. In addition, the rapid urban expansion is also a result of local government’s policy for economic development. New projects such as industrial parks in the urban fringe areas reflect the intention of the local government to promote regional economic growth by constructing infrastructures and setting up ancillary facilities to improve the competitive edge of the locality and attract outside investors (Deng & Huang, 2004; Wu, Xu et al., 2007). Such urban expansion necessitates changes in land use in Chinese cities (Lichtenberg & Ding, 2009; Lin, 2002; Wei & Zhao, 2009; Yang & Gakenheimer, 2007). While expanding outward, cities do not simply replicate their old fabrics in the new areas: fundamental structural transformation takes place. Traditionally, the pre-reform urban settlement in China included state and collectively owned enterprises that contained their own housing and commercial facilities along with their production activities. With the advent of the land and housing reforms introduced in early 1980s, the urban fabric has been altered in many different ways. Most evidently, many state-owned enterprises have moved their production activities to new suburbs while leaving the employees still living in the same localities to enjoy various urban amenities. And in most cases, new enterprises no longer stick to the traditional model of mixing workplace and residence. Housing supply has been subjected to the market mechanism. In addition, the centers of Chinese cities, formerly occupied by working class families, are transferred to business offices, retail stores and the governmental sector constituting Central Business Districts (CBDs). And households seek suburban locations with lower densities, less traffic and noise, and larger, more modern housing. Furthermore, when urban expansion is limited by urban boundaries set by the Chinese central government, Chinese cities start to develop anchor-institutions and satellite communities as new development zones which are connected with inter-regional railways or expressways. Additionally, the evolution of land use in large Chinese cities is towards a multi-centered city layout in order to avoid high traffic density in the urban core. China’s staggering developments in terms of economic growth and urban expansion have far-reaching impact on and pose challenges for its transport sector. This mainly refers to the ever growing traffic demand from individual users and the business sector, requiring constant network construction and expansion and involves almost countless amounts of land and funding. In the next section, we present the state-of-the-art knowledge on transport infrastructure development under these twin forces. Fig. 2 shows that almost all the transport modes have experienced rapid growth in passenger traffic demand from 1980 to 2010 after China’s economic reforms. The traffic flows concentrated on railways and roads, while the trend of road transport has exceeded rail since 1995. In addition, the volume of passengers who traveled by air in recent years is also increasing, given that more Chinese can now afford air travel with higher personal incomes, and under its economic boom an increasing number of foreign tourists and business travelers come to the country. In contrast, less and less people travel by ship because of the relatively low accessibility of inland waterways and long travel times. Therefore, over the past 30 years a tremendous transition took place among the transport modes in terms of their market shares. As we can see in Table 1, the share of railway transport for passengers has fallen by 29%, while the share of roads has increased roughly by 23%. In the same period, the share of air transport for passengers increased from 2% to 13.8%, and the share of waterway transport declined from 6% to 0.2%. Passenger traffic flows (in 100 million passenger-km). Transitions of market shares of different transport modes (1980–2010). Transitions of market shares of different transport modes (1980–2010). Apart from the long-distance inter-city transport, Fig. 3 shows that the numbers of passengers traveling with the urban bus system and urban metro system also experienced steady growth in the past decade. Passenger numbers travelling by bus increased from 24.6 billion people in 1995 to about 60 billion in 2010, while in the same period passengers using the metro system for trips grew from 0.45 to around 4 billion. Since 2000 urban subways and light rail received massive investments and the total metro length in the whole country reached 1469 km in late 2011. The growth rate of passenger flows by metro exceeded that of buses. However, the increase in the traffic flows by bus and metro does not imply that public transit enjoys a higher modal split relative to private vehicles. Rising per capita income among citizens in China and removing the restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on private car ownership have already led to a highly problematic level of motorization. During 1985–2010 the private car ownership in China increased from 284,900 to 86,060,000 (Fig. 4). As a result, mobility depending on automobiles in large Chinese cities accounts for more than 60% compared with the mobility by public transit. Urban traffic flows by bus and metro (1995–2010, in billion passengers). Private car ownership in China (1978–2010, in million). Table 2 shows the status of investment in transport infrastructures in China from 2001 to 2009, and we can see that the scale of the investment shows a massive increase from 243.2 billion RMB in 2001 to 2327.1 billion RMB in 2009. Grouped by mode, a majority of the investment was spent on road and railway constructions while only a small part was invested on urban, air and waterway transport. If grouped by different sources of financing, total investment from the fiscal budget of the central government ranged from 18.3% to 30.4%, and the remaining part came from local governments that may use their local fiscal budget, obtain loans from banks or otherwise attract private capital. When differentiating the investment by ownership, we can see that more than 90% of the investment was from public sources, only around 4–6% was private and a very tiny part from collective sources. Investments in transport infrastructures (2001–2009). Investments in transport infrastructures (2001–2009). Since the mid-1980s, China has invested massively in road infrastructure. The resulting expansion of the road network, has contributed greatly to, and has also been strongly stimulated by, China’s continuing economic development and the reduction of rural poverty (Fan & Chan-Kang, 2008). By the end of 2009, the total length of the road network was about 3,860,800 km, of which 65,100 km are expressways, compared with a figure of 1,698,000 km in total and 19,437 km for expressways in 2001. However, relative to the breadth and length of China’s geographical area and its large population size, its road network still ranks among the sparsest in the world in terms of density and coverage. Focusing only on expressways, the fast construction and expansion originated from the first approved “National Trunk Road System Plan” in the late 1990s. The plan was originally designed for a 35,000-km network including 5 north-south expressways and expressways. And the was billion RMB. By the end of of the planned roughly km, However, by the continuously traffic demand for roads, the Chinese central government expanded the plan into a Plan” in late to build Beijing north-south expressways and expressways, km (Fig. The is in and the total is 2 RMB. more than km have been network are to China’s economic development and social and railway transport is still the most used and for the of passengers and in large and long The length of railways in has increased from km in 1980 to about km in 2009. This expansion of the railway network up in recent years because of the of the and Plan” in (Fig. in the plan are to in when the total length of railways in roughly In to network expansion, the of this plan are to km passenger as as to of the to and the end of 2010, China has around km that are with new and and with the of foreign China has with a of in this plan new are planned in China. and railway network The air transport has been of in the 30 years as a result of and Over the same period, air transport in China has also been significant transformation the “opening-up” policies since In passengers and the only million passengers and million while the figure in has to million and Such rapid growth in air traffic of passengers and have been a result of the increase in leading to an increase in of air passenger transport, and the trend in the of which China has become a has been growing demand for air as China’s infrastructure has and 2009, the Chinese governments all invested billion RMB in constructing and By China has with a density of per are international of which have of and a of of for as as more than that could accommodate and regions, coastal and cities have modern In addition, areas, regions and areas with transport infrastructures also have Urban transit an in transport within urban areas as cities in China. And among the to traffic and huge investments in urban rail in Chinese have been to 1980 when urban rail could in Chinese cities, the total length of urban rail in reached km (Fig. And bus transit have also been from km in 1995 to km in 2009. In addition, the urban trips by Chinese citizens have also increased from billion in 1995 to around billion in 2009. Such an increase in urban traffic demand urban rail Urban rail are currently in Chinese cities. for and rail and new in 15 other Chinese cities. Transit are also or expanded in and The cities of and also on city subway constructions in Chinese cities. along with the twin developments of economic growth and urban expansion, China has experienced rapid transport infrastructure development in recent Such in terms of network expansion, has for accessibility the regional and the local This has been by various Li and the projects and their impact on the accessibility of individual and and and et the accessibility impact of the development of the and railway Xu et the impact of railways on the accessibility on the and a more by taking into account rail and road transport in the of regional accessibility in the Yangtze River However, while the huge are a of the transport sector has Since most of the transport projects are concentrated in central and regions in China, people new transport infrastructure will more regional accessibility or more development & Statistics have that large regional in the density and of road infrastructure in China, for The region is by roads compared to the central and coastal In only and km of roads for of land in and of China, compared to more than km per of land in and central all and are in roads, with a density of only km per of In addition, road is also the in the roads expressways, and class roads account for less than 6% of the road network (Fan & Chan-Kang, 2008). the especially for the passenger most have that their construction will increase the between cities and their et al., For after the of cities connected to this system while cities to this Xu et al., 2010). Apart from the in China’s transport infrastructure around the motorization and the that with it in urban areas. While cities most of them are changes in transport which in the growth of long-distance the trend of mobility and the increase in urban traffic demand Zhao, 2010). The growth of private car ownership in China, which has for people to their of and other has led to the of cities and to travel which impact on the urban problems in Chinese cities especially in large can by very low average and high of driving spent and and & 2009; & 2010). In the of the increase in including those of and air transport, not only in China also in other developing According to the the growth rate in by the transport sector in developing is 3.4% 2006; Zhao, 2010). In China’s motorization the transport use of increased from in 2001 to in of total and it is to in & 2008; et al., 2007; & 2009; & 2010; Zhao, 2010). This situation is more in large Chinese cities & 2008). Beijing as an the number of private in Beijing 4 million in and will still increase an rate of in the trips by private increased by while trips by public transport only increased by The transport sector in Beijing for of total urban and air to road transport was of total air behind the from industrial production 2009). In to the the travel also to higher numbers of traffic The that in the as a consequence of road traffic was that in and And in the same the of China was higher than in & 2009). As the in the points many impressive developments have place in the three when it to transport infrastructure many challenges still in terms of regional and income and and the and to with these In the remaining six contributions to this recent on transport infrastructure in China will and its In the next and will the into the of Confucian values and their modern impact on decision-making on transport infrastructures in China. are Confucian what are their and and to what can they for of infrastructure development in the most This amounts to for and who to the of their own also to Chinese and public for very have a In the and a into on infrastructure investments in China and make an to their impact on economic development that the economic impact of transport infrastructure investments is and after especially in the more of China. also come of regional within that large country and that it was a for the various governments to on investments in the of the that the macro-economic of on the central may very more than those forward the The by and takes to the of Public Private as to road construction and in China. It the power relations between the government, the private sector and which the process in for infrastructure. It that the institutional and power and The is to in a road in China, it is the with more power (in this the local was to to the the users and the private sector. is the geographical for the in the it is as a city and by the now it is the for a subway construction with a many Ma, and a account of the leading to the of an subway the they the in terms of organizational and contractual which the of the more direct more they do not use the power it is that large and to their and financial while and problems to The is also on the construction of a this on the and duration of the and process of the and the of policy network as in the international as a of and that the success as to fast decision-making in China are not by the such as the process took to and construction of the first has only also that in of the that the Chinese and significant institutional with those in of a given by authorities have to through very is seven in Chinese city of this Yu and Yang has long been as one of China’s cities, in not a small share to its modal many people use its high public transport. growing motorization has a impact on this situation and they a number of to the the one among the and of the public transport model is to the of in transit And the that the modal split after system is to more strongly towards while as to users
The high degree of centralization of tax legislative power in China has produced frequent controversies in practice, and is also fundamentally inconsistent with certain basic principles of public finance and the rule of law. However, this arrangement is commonly assumed as a given for the contemporary Chinese policy. This article challenges this prevalent view. It argues that the centralization of tax legislative power began only in 1977, and was by no means a fixed institution before that time. Moreover, such centralization strengthened between 1977 and 1993, which was a period regarded as the golden age of fiscal decentralization. Thus there was a sharp contrast at the time between the distribution of tax legislative power and the predominance of fiscal decentralization. The article argues that this contrast could not be explained by the lack of importance of law during the period. “Taxation according to law” was a core idea in the development of the tax system, and this was inevitable due to the need to have a consistent set of tax rules for everyone to follow, to give these rules the backing of the force of the state, and to ensure that such rules were known to the public. The high degree of tax legislative centralization in China is thus historically contingent, and cries out for explanations as to its causes.
Authority enlargement at township level is the result of institutional change and the development demands of town:there is an contradiction between the drawbacks of town under decentralized system and important strategic position of towns development,which is reflected in the necessity for authority enlargement;authority between local government decentralization and the emergence of the strong town play a catalytic role,which shows the possibility for authority enlargement.In this context,authority enlargement at township level will be a trend of China's local governance system change.This paper research the practice of Shaoxing County,Zhejiang Province,found that authority enlargement at township level has a positive impact on the development environment for town:it can improve the government's public service capacity,promote service-oriented government construction,improve the government' ability of independent management for public affairs,enhance town' development autonomy and vitality,increase the funds for construction and development of town,and improve hardware environment of town.But there are some problems in practice:it may restrict Integrated development of the county,increase land finance to some extent,and raise price of land.Furthermore,space constraints may affect results of initiative authority enlargement at township level;and county-level governments' lack of interest may become an obstacle in the operation.
The revolutionary Chinese institutional order has given way to a more liberal governance regime, which continues to evolve. Nevertheless, as changing patterns of micro-economic regulation illustrate, this has not been a linear and straightforward process. Rather, waves of decentralization and recentralization have unfolded in close succession, and liberalization and reregulation have often been pursued simultaneously. This apparently unique policy configuration seems to be impinging on governance in other parts of the world, given that the “emerging giant” responsible for the “product” is increasingly acting as an active global “rule maker,” as distinct from a merely passive “rule taker.” Yet, it is inadequately understood and is subject to insufficiently critical evaluation. A detailed and probing examination of the substantial academic literature on the subject reveals lingering ambiguities, noticeable gaps, a significant scope for further integration of the various threads, and an uneven picture pointing to potentially less favorable lessons than commonly drawn. * Adjunct Professor of Economics and Finance, Syracuse University (Hong Kong Program) and Adjunct Professor of Global Finance and Governance, Chinese University of Hong Kong. ** Professor of International Law, Hopkins-Nanjing Center, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University and Honorary Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. BYU Journal of Public Law [Vol. 27
Economic decentralization in China has created autonomous leverages for the provincial governments, and it is through bargaining, concessions, and cooperation with the provincial governments that the central government has promoted rapid economic growth. These are the existing cases of coalitional politics within Leninist reform. However, such phenomenal circumstances have not been given serious consideration by most current students of the China’s reforms, who usually neglected the irreversible political transitions away from Leninism in Communist countries; nor do my findings support theories of political development, which see political coalitions only as alignments between the state and organized social interests, such as parties and interest groups. The deficiency of both types of explanations prohibits them from correctly explaining new political events in the Chinese economic decentralization. The question thus raised is: how a coalitional politics is formed between the central government and the provincial governments, through which unorganized social interests are articulated, by provincial institutions, in state policy making in Leninist China? This book answers this question by examining and critiquing competing explanations of political transitions and existing methods of studying transformations in central-local relationships in China. It applies an interactive dimension in power restructuring approach, and a multidimensional policy (fiscal, finance, investment, foreign trade policies) analytical method within the context of political coalitional theory. It has found that the history of the Chinese political system has been one of the continuous human desires for freedom from the centralized kingdom, and of consistent efforts by the political center to find institutional remedies. Reform experiences suggest that the transfer of economic power from the center to the provinces has established institutional foundations for political coalitions between the central and local governments. The provincial governments, as representatives and articulators of local interests, have been encouraged by an agenda of economic decentralization, and have interacted with the center through informal and formal ways, in bargaining over rational policy. The contradiction between Mao’s political legacies and a common desire for reform is largely responsible for such a unique political coalition during this transition. The cases of Guangdong Province and Shanghai Municipality have been utilized to illustrate the general framework and overarching hypotheses of this study.
This paper sheds light on the heavy financial burden on peasants in China’s fiscal decentralization system. Using a political economy framework, this paper explores the tax-farming nature of China’s fiscally decentralized system and examines why the system incurs a particularly heavy financial burden on peasants. Specifically, it points out that a political hierarchy financed by a tax-farming system in China, fails to contain the exploitative behavior of local officials, which results in the expenditure devolution and revenue centralization within the hierarchy. Ultimately, peasants bear the brunt of the tax burden. As the financial pressure of excessive levies and fees reaches a perilous point, peasants are resorting to violent protests. Unless a fiscally decentralized system with horizontal accountability mechanisms evolves, the country’s ability to sustain a centralized polity may become increasingly undermined. A case study of township finance is used to exemplify the exploitative nature of China’s fiscal decentralization system.
This chapter integrates current Chinese education reform into the unique socioeconomic context of China in a transitional time and explores the complexity of education decentralization in China through an in-depth analysis on changes in education finance, administration, and curriculum development. Mark Hanson's theory of education decentralization is cited to build a conceptual framework for examining education decentralization in China. Previous studies, government documents, laws, and regulations related to the current wave of Chinese education reform are reviewed to capture a true picture of education decentralization in China. In investigating the background, actual actions, and motive of the current Chinese education reform, the chapter demonstrates that the on-going Chinese education reform is moving toward a centralized decentralization. Linking education with the unified national goal of economic modernization, the paradoxical mixture of centralization and decentralization is a strategic means to avoid loss of centralized control. Literature on decentralization reform in Chinese education primarily concentrates on changed Chinese education policies in the reform. This chapter places the focus on the contextual factors that shape the decentralization trend in current reform.
To meet the increasing scholarly interest in China, this symposium provides a forum for scholars in public budgeting and finance to exchange research on China-related issues. There have been new initiatives to reform China's public fiscal system in the past two decades. The papers in this symposium examine advances and associated issues in fiscal decentralization, local budgeting, and urban infrastructure financing. The papers not only analyze the existing issues, but also make recommendations on how to develop an accountable local budgeting system, how to finance sustainable urban infrastructure, and how to pursue a more balanced approach to fiscal decentralization in contemporary China.
CART19 therapy has revolutionized the treatment of CD19<sup>+</sup> acute lymphoblastic leukemia, demonstrating an unprecedented complete remission rate; however, as follow-up prolongs, a high relapse rate after CART19 therapy has emerged as one of the major problems. Relapse can be attributed to the loss of leukemic cell immunogenicity, diminished function and amount of CART19 cells, and the inhibitory bone marrow microenvironment. Although studies to prevent and treat relapse have begun, some encouraging results have demonstrated the possibility of decreasing the relapse rate. In this review, we focus on the possible mechanisms behind relapse. We will summarize and propose strategies to prevent and manage relapse on the basis of these potential mechanisms.